


Electricity (Be My Ebb And Flow)

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: But Mostly Just Domestic Fluff, Chilly Days, Cravings, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a chilly day. James wants very specific food. Michael will do whatever he can to make James happy, especially since he's pretty sure he's technically at fault for this whole unexpected James-having-their-baby situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Electricity (Be My Ebb And Flow)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> For shayz, who likes fluff and domesticity and mpreg--hey, my first attempt ever at that!--and also the fault of that tumblr post about Michael buying thirty bags of dill-pickle Lays, which my brain decided meant 'Michael taking care of pregnant James!'
> 
> Title and opening lines courtesy of the Arctic Monkeys' "Electricity."

 

_my heart was breaking and got left unlocked_  
 _didn’t see you sneak in but I’m glad you stopped_  
 _tell me something I don’t already know_  
 _like how you get your kisses to fill me with electricity_

  
“I want pickles,” James announces.  
  
Michael blinks, stares at his three-month-pregnant husband not because of the cravings he’s learned to expect but because of the suddenness, and offers, “We might have some. I could—”  
  
“No. Never mind. I want crisps.” Around the conversation, the television babbles cheerfully, tuned to the Food Network; this may explain the cravings, or it may not, as the screen’s currently showing gingerbread creation, which is decidedly not pickle-related. James has been goodnaturedly critiquing the recipe; Michael’s been enjoying this commentary, because of course James is the best creator of baked goods he knows and James’s own gingerbread is unquestionably perfect.  
  
Outside, the wind purrs, scampering around the windows of the flat. It’s not raining, not yet, but the sky’s doing a good impression of slate, solid and grey. Inside, they’ve got blankets, and he’s just made tea, and James’s kisses taste like vanilla-bean rooibos.  
  
“I don’t think we have any crisps—”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“James,” Michael says, very earnestly, “I love you, and I’m amazed and humbled and sort of incredibly in awe every time I look at you and think you’re carrying our baby, but I’m not magical. I can’t, you know, make crisps appear.”  
  
“Are you sure,” James says, but he’s teasing now, and flops over onto Michael’s lap, head on one thigh. “I always thought you were. Magical. I continue to think you’re magical. I hurt everywhere.”  
  
“You do?” He strokes a hand through dark hair where it spills over his leg, redwood brown against faded denim. He’s trying not to be afraid; they’ve had all the check-ups, bought James all the vitamins, come home last week with an ultrasound and a clean bill of health. The ultrasound’s tacked up on the fridge, and he’d been informed by their doctor in no uncertain terms that some pain, soreness in stretching ligaments and twinging muscles and protesting internal arrangements, is normal and that therefore he should really stop shouting at the people who couldn’t do anything to take it away.  
  
And that all might be normal, yes. He knows. But the worst day of his life will always be the afternoon that had precipitated that rush to the emergency room, the moment when James had tried to stand up from the sofa and gone completely white and held out a hand and whispered, “Michael…”  
  
He runs fingers through the silky waves, here and safe and present, again. There’s some grey sneaking in to play with the brown; James hasn’t bothered dying them, not working at the moment, and Michael likes the unexpected strands and the fact that James doesn’t care about them, isn’t bothered by vanity or tabloid remarks. James is perfectly himself, fearless and laughing and generous to the world, and Michael loves him so much that sometimes he thinks his heart must break and overflow with the emotion.  
  
“James,” he asks, because James hasn’t answered him, and settles fingertips over the nearest temple, rubbing gently, small circles, no pressure. “Love?”  
  
“Oh…” That spectacular voice sounds weary. Tiredness in the loch. Twilight over purple Highland hills. “Nothing worse than normal. It’s just I’m very much over this. The aching everywhere part, I mean. I’m sorry, I’m complaining, I know, you can tell me to stop.”  
  
“You can complain if you want. Technically this is my fault, anyway, sort of.”  
  
This gets blue eyes to open and gaze at him in merry exasperation. “It’s both our faults, and you know that. Yes, you got us very drunk, and yes, you forgot to buy more condoms, and yes, you asked if you could fuck me anyway, but I said yes to you. And apparently it only takes once. Who knew.”  
  
“It only takes once if you’re you. Like rabbits.”  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
“Soft. Fluffy. You know. Good at reproducing.”  
  
“Hilarious,” James grumbles, and tries to roll over and bite Michael’s hip, an effort thwarted by his own current laziness and the armor of Michael’s jeans. “Give me a massage, then. And feed me. We’re starving.”  
  
“Pick one. At least which one you want first. I can do both, in whichever order you’d like them.” He will. He’d been teasing with the fertility joke, but he likes the thought, deep down. James isn’t showing much yet, but will be; will be round and curved and warm with their baby inside him, and the thought sparks a rush of bright fierce proprietary emotion through his body. Their baby. His family.  
  
He and James had wanted a family, of course. They’d talked about adoption; had considered agencies, somewhat idly, in a year or so. After they’d bought a proper house. Taken time off from filming. Planned.  
  
And then James had discovered that, while perhaps one in five thousand men could potentially end up pregnant, he was incontrovertibly among that number.  
  
Michael’d demanded, somewhere between shock and excitement and relief that James wasn’t dying of some strange disease involving vomiting and fatigue and inexplicable weight gain, and also the beginnings of sheer horror at everything they’d need to get done in nine months, “ _How_ did you not know?”  
  
James had glared at him from the hospital bed, and said, “I’d never had sex with a man before you, you know, it’s not like I ever even thought about being pregnant, we were going to fucking adopt!” and Michael’d said “You can’t say fuck around our baby!” and they’d stared at each other in utter silence and then burst out laughing. Simultaneously.  
  
He’d taken James’s hand and perched on the side of that hospital bed, and James had smiled at him, and he’d known down to his bones that everything was going to be all right.  
  
James occasionally takes issue with this definition of all right—“You’re not the one who can’t fit into his favorite jeans anymore!”—but is still willing to kiss him, so that’s fine. And they’ve been spending spare weekends looking at family-sized houses.  
  
“Still hungry.”  
  
“Want a carrot?”  
  
“Oh, fuck you. Even my elbows hurt. Do you think that’s normal? I don’t think elbows should hurt.”  
  
“You were leaning on them, looking up that listing on the laptop. And you’ve got…sort of…extra weight to lean.”  
  
“Don’t listen to him,” James says to his stomach. “We’re not fat. No, _you’re_ not fat. I’m going to be enormous, though. Whale-like proportions.”  
  
“All right, I’m sorry.”  
  
James shuts his eyes again and doesn’t answer.  
  
“James,” Michael tries again, “I am sorry. You’re not fat. You’re having a baby. Our baby. I love you. Come on, I didn’t mean it, you know that, I wouldn’t mean it, I’m only teasing. Please.”  
  
“I know,” James says, but doesn’t look up. “I’m just…off-balance today.”  
  
“You—are you feeling dizzy, or—”  
  
“No! No, not like that, sorry. I’m…” A wave, one freckled hand, motion encompassing his body and the room and by extension the entire situation. “I’m fine. But I’m hungry and nothing sounds good and I want food but I don’t want food and I’m extremely tired of being tired. Sorry, again, I love you too. I know you were teasing.”  
  
“James,” Michael says, and can’t bend over to kiss him with James’s head in his lap, but he can lift one hand and bring it to his lips and kiss dancing freckles, so he does, nibbling a little, licking, apologizing. “Can I do anything?”  
  
“I don’t know—” James stops. Michael follows his gaze to the television screen. Stares. Says, “Oh, come on,” to it and to the universe.  
  
“I want,” James says, “exactly that. Right there.”  
  
“Those’re dill-pickle flavored crisps, James.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I’ll have to go to the shop…”  
  
“Please?” James gazes at him with all the relentless power of those ocean-blue eyes. Michael’s helpless.  
  
“…fine. Anything else?”  
  
“Pistachio ice-cream?”  
  
“You’re…not…going to…combine them, are you?”  
  
“Ack,” James says, thoughtfully. “No. That’s disgusting. Maybe. Thank you for the idea.”  
  
“No. I’ll be right back, all right? Don’t move. Don’t even sit up.” He stacks blankets and the television remote and three Star Trek novels atop James, who looks at him with affronted dignity and then gives up and folds himself into the blankets. They cuddle around him protectively.  
  
“Also here’s your phone. Call me if you need anything. Or if you feel worse. Anything. Love you.” A kiss to that barely curved stomach, brief flash of pale skin when he tugs up James’s sweater; another kiss to laughing lips, and then he runs out the door.  
  
It takes James all of one minute to text him. Michael grabs the phone out of his pocket, nearly loses his scarf to the wind, and fumbles with the screen through gloves.  
  
 _You said tell you if I need anything. So I thought of something I always need. You._  
  
 _< 3_, Michael sends back, and jogs because the afternoon is brisk and his coat’s not quite thick enough. The shop’s not far, down on the corner, but the wind chill’s vicious. Still, he’s going to face it. He’s going to go to the shop, and purchase crisps that will not go at all with pistachio ice cream, and he’s going to bring them home and provide for James.  
  
He rather likes the sound of that. Repeats it in his head. With capital letters. He can Go To The Shop. And he can Provide For His Family.  
  
The wind yanks at his scarf again and makes him almost trip. The phone lights up again, and informs him that his Family desires bacon.  
  
Fine. Dill-pickle crisps—not chips, as the American commercial’d insisted, that’s just fundamentally incorrect—and pistachio ice-cream and bacon. He tries not to think about the combination. Ducks through the door, out of the wind at last, and ignores the stare from the kid behind the counter, who must be new, because it’s not like James and Michael haven’t been going to this particular shop for months.  
  
 _They only have turkey bacon; ok?_  
  
If it’s not, he’ll do…something. Demand that the kid produce the real version. Find a different store. This is important. The quest for James’s bacon.  
  
But James sends back _Fine_ , along with a text-drawing shape that Michael figures out after some head-tilting is meant to be a rabbit under a nest of blankets. At least he’s pretty certain that’s an ear.  
  
 _You’re adorable._  
  
 _Come back. It’s cold out there and I want to keep you warm._  
  
 _On the way._  
  
He pays as quickly as he can—the boy keeps staring at him, though this may be because Michael’s holding every single bag of dill-pickle chips in the store, at least thirty—and says “Thank you” because his mother brought him up to be polite, and runs back down the street and up the steps and into the flat, where the television’s chattering about pumpkin cream-cheese loaves, where the air’s rich with the scent of tea and the familiar shapes of the bookshelves looming comfortably, where James is pushing himself up on an elbow and smiling like the glow in Michael’s own heart.  
  
“Come here,” James says, and holds out an arm and pulls him into the snug soft space beneath the blankets, warm and cozy and secure where Michael’s skin’s cold with lingering ice, determined hands holding him close and chasing the chill away. “You ridiculous man. Take a real coat next time. And did you buy all the dill-pickle crisps in existence?”  
  
“You said you wanted them.”  
  
“I love and adore you. Try one.”  
  
The things he does for those blue eyes. “Fine…yes…huh. Okay. Not bad.”  
  
“See? They’d probably go with the bacon, too.”  
  
“The bacon maybe. Not on the ice-cream. Not _ever_.”  
  
“Not _yet_ ,” James says, and feeds him another crisp inside the blanket-nest, one of Michael’s arms around his shoulders and Michael’s other hand slipping back under the sweater and settling firmly down over the tiny bump that’s their growing family, “anyway.”


End file.
